“Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you…” From Isaiah 43
Well, for us, those waters we passed through were on the runway and if we were the author of that text, we might add “and when you walk down crumbling sidewalks you will not stumble, when you cross the wide highway the bus will not run over you, when the front desk does not understand you will not be intimidated, and when you see the whole roasted goat (teeth and all) you will not loose your supper…”
Today was quite a day! We did not receive our daughter today. That was probably a good thing, we were all so exhausted this afternoon that we all fell asleep for at least a couple of hours. We were rushed to the airport early this morning. After going through the security check, where they made us all take out our water bottles for them to smell, we made it to our gate right as they were boarding. Just as we were about to taxi to the runway, an intense storm hit and we sat in our very warm airplane for nearly two hours before takeoff. When the storm finally broke, the water on some parts of the airport was as deep as the tops of the wheels of cars that were driving across the runway.
The four hour flight was filled with much interesting and beautiful scenery as we flew over the Gobi desert and along side the spectacular Tianshan Mountain range. We flew for most of the flight over vast unpopulated areas only to suddenly burst upon this city of two million people.
This city is, we learned, a quite popular tourist destination. Aside from the mountains and Heavenly Lake, there are well preserved ancient cities, renowned fruits and a bustling night life. We met our city guide, Jenny and made plans for our very important day tomorrow. We will meet in the morning to meet our daughter, complete the adoption and apply for a passport. Then we will have free time for the rest of the week while we wait for the passport.
When we were finished meeting with Jenny, we were all very hungry. We didn’t have time for breakfast this morning and the meal that we received on the plane, which was marked “muslim” didn’t offer us enough recognizable food to sustain us for long. We went looking for food around 3:30 in the afternoon. We thought it would be wise to start with one of the hotel restaurants. We discovered that the Western restaurant is only open from Midnight until Noon (see earlier note about nightlife). The other two restaurants would not open until 7 p.m. We then decided to walk outside (where it was about 100 degrees) in search of food and bottled water. We’ve discovered that there are only a few people in the hotel that speak very limited English and none of the surrounding vendors speak English, some do not even speak Chinese. This area has a very large Muslim population and all of the signs are written in both Chinese and Uighur (weegur) which is very similar to Arabic. We couldn’t find any restaurants opening before 7 p.m., were a little afraid to try the street vendor food our first day and narrowly survived our trip across the street and back. Traffic rules in China are quite different from home! We decided to walk on our side of the busy street from now on. Down the street a bit, we found a grocery store. We couldn’t find any brands of water we recognized, but went for the one that at least said, “purified water.” We bought a bottle of sprite and coke and a package of Oreo cookies as they were the only things we recognized in the store. This is quite an adventure! I’m sure we would have enjoyed it more if we weren’t so hungry and tired. The vendors and buildings remind us very much of Oaxaca, Mexico. We then decided to try to make cup of noodles in our room. After finally finding someone that understood enough English to help us get our water pot working, those of us that stayed awake long enough attempted to eat noodles without utensils.
When we forced ourselves to wake up from our nap, we set out in search of food again and decided on the Chinese restaurant in the hotel. They did have the menu printed in Chinese and English which helped a lot. We decided to pass on the horse intestines Western style, the braised ox tail, birds nest abalone, shark fin, lambs hooves and duck blood parts. We found something familiar on the dessert menu – Fried rice and Pan Fried noodles! We also found egg soup which was bland but similar to egg flower. We tried one local dish – Chicken with pepper potatoes, which was spicy but quite tasty. The girls suggested we go after they rolled a whole cooked goat next to our table. It seemed a bit ironic after we carefully nursed and medicated our sick goat the week before we left!
Tomorrow will be another big day, but now we know where to buy water and oreos and that we can live on fried rice if we choose our meals at the right times! We’re still very happy to be here and trying to embrace each adventure.
